1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a multilayer ceramic electronic component having excellent capacitance and low equivalent series inductance (ESL), and being easily mounted on a circuit board.
2. Description of the Related Art
Generally, electronic components using a ceramic material, such as a capacitor, an inductor, a piezoelectric element, a varistor, or a thermistor, and the like, include a ceramic body formed of a ceramic material, internal electrodes formed within the ceramic body, and external electrodes mounted on surfaces of the ceramic body so as to be connected to the internal electrodes.
Among ceramic electronic components, a multilayer ceramic capacitor includes a plurality of laminated dielectric layers, internal electrodes disposed to face each other, having the dielectric layer interposed therebetween, and external electrodes electrically connected to the internal electrodes.
The multilayer ceramic capacitor has been widely used as a component for mobile communications devices such as computers, personal digital assistants (PDAs), mobile phones, and the like, due to advantages such as a relatively small size, high capacity, ease of mounting, or the like.
Recently, as electronic products have been miniaturized and multi-functionalized, chip components have also tended to be miniaturized and multi-functionalized. As a result, there is a need to miniaturize the multilayer ceramic capacitor and increase the capacitance thereof.
In addition, the multilayer ceramic capacitor has been usefully employed as a bypass capacitor disposed in a power supply circuit in a large scale integration (LSI) scheme. The multilayer ceramic capacitor needs to have a capability of effectively removing high frequency noise in order to serve as the bypass capacitor. This demand has been further increased in accordance with the trend toward electronic devices having high frequencies. A multilayer ceramic capacitor used as a bypass capacitor may be electrically connected to a mounting pad on a circuit board through soldering, and the mounting pad may be connected to other external circuits through wiring patterns or conductive vias on the circuit board.
The multilayer ceramic capacitor has equivalent series resistance (ESR) and equivalent series inductance (ESL) components in addition to a capacitance component. These ESR and ESL components hinder a function of the bypass capacitor, particularly, the ESL increases inductance of the capacitor at high frequencies, to thereby hinder high frequency noise removal characteristics.